The Last Kiss Goodbye: A Charlotte Stone Novel Read online

  “That’s it,” Michael barked at Charlie as his big, semi-solid-looking body surged right through the breakfast bar in a preemptive rush toward the back door and whoever was on the other side of it. “Move your ass. Upstairs. Now.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Don’t go outside. You might get sucked in. You need to stay close to the running water,” Charlie called urgently after him as, galvanized by fear, she shot into motion herself. If he heard her, she couldn’t tell: he had disappeared from view. Physically formidable in life, in death Michael could provide her with about as much in the way of actual protection as a whisper of air, although he didn’t seem to remember that most of the time and there were indeed occasional moments when he solidified and was once again the badass he had formerly been. Not that those moments were anything that he could control, or she could count on, so she didn’t. Thrusting her cell phone into her pants pocket, careful to stay hunched over so that she couldn’t be seen through the windows, Charlie lunged across the kitchen toward the only possible source of a weapon in the house: the silverware drawer.

  Pathetic? Oh, yeah. But she had no gun, no burglar alarm, no real defensive system set up in the house, because after what felt like a lifetime of it she had been sick to death of living her life in fear.

  “Who are you talking to? There’s nobody there,” Jenna wailed. Then, into the phone as Charlie threw her a startled, self-conscious look because she hadn’t even realized that she had been talking to Michael out loud, Jenna added in a voice that shook: “He’s here. He’s trying to get in the door. Tell the police to hurry. Please, please tell them to hurry.”

  Trotting out her standard line that she was talking to herself seemed pointless under the circumstances, so Charlie didn’t bother. Pulse racing, eyes fixed on what she could see of the windows—she could make out nothing beyond the darkness and the rain, which was falling heavily now, but she knew, knew that someone malignant was out there—Charlie snatched a steak knife from the silverware drawer. Then cautiously raising her head above the level of the counter, she did a lightning scan of the kitchen. Despite the fact that she was focused on the whereabouts of the man with the gun, the thought that instantly struck her was, No sign of Michael. The panicked realization curled through her mind, threading through the more immediate issue of getting to safety like a worm through soft wood. Was Michael outside, or had he been sucked back into Spookville? Not that it made any real difference: in either case, there was nothing she could do.

  And right then, living through the next few minutes was paramount.

  Gesturing to Jenna to head for the hall, acutely conscious that the bad guy might be right outside and even, possibly, able to hear them, Charlie whispered, “Our best bet is to lock ourselves in my bedroom until help gets here. Upstairs, second door on the right.”

  Jenna nodded jerkily. Breathing “Hurry” one more time into the phone, Jenna dropped the receiver. Staying low, she darted toward the hall with Charlie right behind her. Without the sheltering breakfast bar to conceal them, they had to be perfectly visible to whoever was outside as they flew across those last few yards. Charlie imagined that she could feel eyes—evil eyes—trained on them the entire way, and a cold chill snaked down her spine.

  “I’m scared.” Along with that charged whisper, Jenna threw a hunted look back at Charlie as they gained the dubious security of the shadowy hall and raced down it toward the stairs. Blood and tears mixed on Jenna’s face: she looked ghastly in the dim light. Drops of water splattered the floor in her wake, making it dangerously slippery beneath Charlie’s unaccustomedly high heels. She would have kicked them off if it had been possible, but it wasn’t: the elegant sandals had ankle straps. Do not fall down. “He’s going to kill me, I know it. Oh, please don’t let him get me again.”

  At the terror in Jenna’s expression, Charlie felt cold sweat break out on her own brow. “I won’t. I promise. Head up the stairs.”

  A sudden loud thud from the kitchen—Oh, God, was that the sound of the door being kicked in?—sent Charlie’s heart leaping into her throat. This has to be a nightmare. Only it wasn’t. Jenna threw a horror-stricken look back at her.

  “What was that? Did he just break in?” Her eyes were wild.

  Shaking her head—a silent I don’t know—while her blood ran cold, Charlie mouthed, “Go.”

  The police—Ken Ewall—help—would be there at any second. Charlie hoped. No, she prayed. But would they be in time? If he was already in the house—she couldn’t finish the thought. Strain her ears though she might, she could hear nothing else from the kitchen over the clatter of her own and Jenna’s harried footsteps and the harsh pant of their combined breathing.

  That very stillness made her stomach cramp. She couldn’t stop herself from looking over her shoulder.

  Where is he?

  Jenna was on the stairs, clambering up them like she expected to be grabbed from behind at any second. It was a noisy, clumsy progress that no one who was inside the house could possibly miss hearing. Clenching her teeth in an effort to keep a lid on her own fear, Charlie grabbed the newel post, meaning to fly up the stairs in Jenna’s wake. The sudden loud buzz of the doorbell caught her by surprise before she could so much as plant a foot on the steps. Both she and Jenna squeaked and jumped like terrified mice.

  “Oh, no, oh, no!” Jenna gasped, shooting a look at the door as, halfway up the stairs, she nearly lost her footing.

  The killer wouldn’t ring the doorbell. That was the near certainty that struck Charlie like a lifeline even as an instant, reactive terror exploded along her nerve endings and, heart in throat, she whirled to face the door.

  “Are you kidding me? Is that a fucking steak knife in your hand?” Michael demanded furiously. Charlie was so glad to know that he hadn’t yet been trapped forever in the Great Beyond, she didn’t even mind the attitude. Along with a surge of profound thankfulness, she felt instantly safer simply because he was there, no matter how stupid that might be. “Well, that would sure scare the hell outta me.”

  I don’t care how relieved you are to see him: don’t answer. The adrenaline she’d been mainlining made her shiver. Michael must have seen, because he swore.

  “It’s got to be the police.” Her pounding heart and jumping nerves notwithstanding, that doorbell had to be good news, she was almost sure. Charlie threw the reassurance up the staircase at Jenna just as the girl gained the second floor and scrambled from view. Certain that she was right—praying that she was right—even while her ears acutely sought any sounds of an intruder rushing at her from the kitchen and her eyes were busy trying to detect some glimmer of Michael, Charlie leaped for the door.

  Enough doubt about who might be on the other side of it remained to prompt her to take a few nerve-racking seconds to peer through the peephole—“She’s hiding and you’re opening the door? You don’t see anything wrong with that?” was Michael’s incensed take on it, in reply to which she was goaded into hissing, “Shut up, you, it’s my neighbor”—before fumbling with the lock and throwing the door wide.

  “Oh, Ken, thank goodness!” The scent of wet earth rushed past her into the house. Outside, it was as dark as a dungeon now, with pouring rain that sounded like a waterfall and fell in silvery sheets. Across the street, she could see, pale and wavery, lights on in the Ewells’ house. Hurtling toward her—thank God!—she could hear sirens, although from the sound of them they were still some little distance away. Right in front of her stood Ken, foursquare and solid, squinting questioningly at her. He wasn’t tall, maybe five-nine or so, and wasn’t particular imposing, either, but as a sworn officer of the law he was exactly what she needed. Bathed in the porch light’s yellow glow, fully dressed down to a clear plastic rain poncho with a hood that he had pulled on over jeans and a dark-colored shirt, he was the most welcome thing she’d set eyes on since finding Michael on her couch earlier. A solid family man, father of two young boys, he was around her own age, as was Debbie, but his stocky build coupled
with thinning brown hair made him look older. Not that Charlie particularly noticed, or cared, beyond what interested her most about him right at that moment: his gun. The weapon was in his hand, covered protectively by a fold of the poncho.

  “Would you look at that, it’s Paul Blart, Mall Cop,” Michael marveled, and Charlie’s lips tightened. “I know I feel all safer now.”

  Okay, so maybe the physical comparison was apt. But Ken was still an armed deputy, damn it, which beat a sarcastic ghost hands-down in this situation.

  “So what—” Ken began, his blunt, not unattractive features contracting in a frown, but Charlie didn’t let him finish. Grabbing his arm through the wet layer of plastic, she pulled him into the hall. She didn’t even need a sideways glance to spot Michael: he was right beside her, having progressed from a shimmer to being semi-transparent. Solid enough so that she could see the frown on his face.

  “A man with a gun. He was in the kitchen.” Talking fast, she pointed the way to Ken. “At least, I think he was. It sounded like he kicked the door in. I don’t know if he actually came inside, though. A girl—Jenna McDaniels, she disappeared three days ago from the University of Richmond, you’ve probably heard about it on the news—banged on my kitchen door about five minutes ago. I let her in. She was hurt and frightened and said that a man with a gun was chasing her and was going to kill her. And then the back doorknob rattled and there was a huge thud that I thought might have been him kicking in the door and he may or may not be in the house now.”

  In her rush to get the most pertinent facts out as quickly as possible, Charlie realized she was probably being less than clear. Ken didn’t seem to be paying a whole lot of attention to what she was saying anyway. He frowned in the direction of the kitchen. Then his eyes swept the hallway, missing nothing except, of course, Michael. Finally he looked at Charlie.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  Charlie was about to tell him when two police cars hove into view at the far end of the street, their bubble lights pulsing brightly through the darkness and the rain.

  “Thank God.” She touched his arm and pointed. Turning, he saw them, too. “Now you’ll have backup,” Charlie added on a note of relief, because she really hadn’t liked the idea of sending her mild-mannered neighbor into harm’s way alone.

  “You can stop worrying. The boogeyman’s long gone.” Michael was looking out through the rain at the cops. “I couldn’t get outside—when I tried I got yanked into Spookville and had to work like hell to get out again—but after I finally broke through I ended up back in your kitchen. The door’s open, but nobody’s in there.”

  As Charlie absorbed the information, she felt some of the desperate energy leave her tense muscles. Thinking about what he must have gone through to return to her, she felt her heart quiver. What she wanted to say to him was, I’m so glad you made it back. But she didn’t, and not simply because they had an audience.

  “You say you’ve got Jenna McDaniels?” As he spoke, Ken was fishing for something in his pocket—his cell phone, she saw as he managed to free it from both his pocket and the protective plastic in which he was shrouded. He looked toward the kitchen again, but made no move to head in that direction. Probably, Charlie thought, he was more than happy to wait for the reinforcements. Hitting a button, Ken lifted the phone toward his ear.

  “He wants to take credit for finding the girl before the real po-po arrive,” Michael said. “You might want to think about losing the steak knife, by the way. Unless you’ve got some late supper plans I don’t know about.”

  “She’s upstairs,” Charlie answered Ken, ignoring Michael—she would be damned if she was going to acknowledge him in front of anyone else again by even so much as a dirty look cast his way. At the same time, she unobtrusively sidled to her left and put the knife down on the console table. Not that she was doing so because Michael had suggested it. It was only, now that the danger was past, clutching it in her fist made her feel—okay, let’s face it—foolish. “She said she was kidnapped three days ago. She said she was with two other girls, both of whom are now dead.” Shivering again, she glanced up the stairs and caught a glimpse of Jenna lurking fearfully in the shadows at the top.

  “It’s safe now,” Charlie called to her. “The police are here.”

  Ken looked up at Jenna, who shrank back out of sight. “That the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, Sheriff, you know that girl who’s been missing for the last three days? The one who’s been all over TV? Jenna McDaniels? I got her,” Ken said into the phone on a note of excitement. “Yeah, she’s alive.”

  “Made his day,” Michael said. “Bet he gets a big ole attaboy for this.”

  “She says there are two other girls besides her, who are dead,” Ken continued. “Dr. Stone’s house. Right across the street from me. You know, Charlotte Stone, works up at the Ridge? Yeah, that’s her.”

  The police cars pulled up in front of Charlie’s house. As the sirens were cut and the lights died, Charlie took a deep breath and said, “I’ll be right back,” to Ken, then went up the stairs to find Jenna—and, not incidentally, do what she could to help Michael.

  The thought of him going to hell for all eternity was more than she could live with. Whether he deserved it or not.

  She might be fresh out of ju-ju, but she’d just remembered someone she could possibly turn to for advice. The sudden rush of excitement that the tiny glimmer of hope brought with it was eye-opening.

  You’re getting way too involved here.

  “You even got a gun in the house?” Michael growled. He was right behind her again, a semi-solid phantom whose presence would have been absolutely driving her around the bend by this time if the thought of him vanishing forever hadn’t been so shattering. Since she was halfway up the stairs, equally far away from both Jenna and Ken and presumably out of earshot of both, Charlie whispered a short, “No.”

  “A burglar alarm?”

  “No. Hush.”

  Michael replied to that with a snort and a disgusted, “Why am I even surprised?”

  It was only as she reached the top of the stairs that Charlie realized her knees felt wobbly. Probably because the adrenaline rush that was part and parcel of all the stress she’d just been through was starting to subside.

  “Jenna?” The second floor was dark except for grayish moonlight sifting through the open bedroom doors, but because Jenna was crying Charlie had no trouble spotting the girl, who was huddled in a little ball in a shadowy corner slightly to the right of the top of the stairs. Behind Charlie, Michael was now so see-through that a shaft of moonlight passing through him glimmered off dust motes where he stood, and with a shiver of fear Charlie was once again reminded of the small amount of time she probably had to work with before he was irretrievably gone. But then Jenna made an inarticulate sound by way of reply, and Charlie forced herself to focus on her.

  The living have to take precedence over the dead. With that firmly in mind, Charlie switched on the light in the upstairs hall. It wasn’t particularly bright but the instant illumination still felt shocking under the circumstances, and Jenna sucked in a ragged breath.

  “It’s okay,” Charlie said again. Wet and bedraggled, visibly shivering, the girl was huddled in a ball with her dripping hair spilling around her like a curtain and her arms wrapped around her knees. Although more sluggishly than before, blood still slid down the left side of her face, which was white and pinched and suddenly very young-looking. Her eyes were huge as she stared up at Charlie.

  “Is he”—Jenna’s voice cracked—“gone?”

  “Yes.” As she spoke, Charlie took the two steps required to reach the linen closet and extracted a washcloth and a large green and white striped beach towel from it. “The man in the hall is a deputy, and two police cars pulled up out front as I came upstairs. You don’t have to be afraid anymore. You’re absolutely safe, I promise. It’s over.”

  “Oh, my God.” Jenna dropped her head onto her knees and b
egan to cry again, in great wrenching wails that had Michael grimacing and looking uncomfortable and backing off. Shooting him a stay out of this look, Charlie shook the towel out, draped it around the girl’s heaving shoulders, then hunkered down beside her.

  This kind of pain she knew.

  “Jenna. It’s all right. Here, let me hold this to your cut.” Clutching the towel around her now, Jenna glanced up at that. Charlie smoothed the cold, wet strands of her hair back from her face, tucking them behind her ear before pressing the folded washcloth to the still-bleeding wound. The cut was jagged and the edges gaped, showing the layer of white fat beneath through the oozing blood. It would need stitches, probably about a dozen.

  For a second Charlie found herself speculating about what kind of weapon could cause such a wound.

  “Can you c-call my mother?” Jenna asked between sobs.

  “Yes. Of course. Here, keep this pressed to your head and give me her number.” As Jenna’s hand replaced hers on the washcloth, Charlie fumbled to pull her phone out of her pocket.

  Jenna gasped out a number. Charlie tapped it in.

  “Hello?” A woman answered on the first ring. From the desperate sound of her voice Charlie guessed that she somehow knew that this call was about her daughter. Maybe she had a special cell phone number that only certain people, like Jenna, knew. Charlie had no idea, but hope and dread were there in equal measures in the woman’s voice. Charlie’s heart went out to her even as she struggled to keep her own voice steady and calm.

  “This is Dr. Charlie Stone. I have good news: Jenna’s safe. She’s here with me right now.”

  The woman let out a broken cry that it was apparent Jenna heard, because she reached a shaking hand out for the phone. “Mama?”

  Charlie passed the phone to her without another word.

  “Mama, I’m okay,” Jenna said into the phone, then in response to whatever her mother replied once more broke down into noisy tears.